Once you create your pipeline stages, you’ll move business opportunities through each stage, and end the opportunity's journey by moving it to a won, lost or abandoned state. Check out the GIF below to see this in action:

Let's understand won, lost or abandoned in more detail.

Won - You are successfully concluding this sale or business deal. You can turn the associated person and company records into Current Customers. You can add notes that might be helpful in the handoff to the Customer Success team who will onboard this customer. You can change the Close Date to today, which is important to help keep your reporting accurate.

Lost - You will not conclude this sale or business deal. Maybe this is your decision (i.e. Customer is not the right fit) or maybe this is the customer's decision (i.e. they went with a competitor or didn't have the budget for your service). You'll choose a Loss Reason to indicate why you didn't complete the business deal, which is sent to your reporting to help understand why deals are often lost. You can change the close date to today, which helps keep your reporting accurate.

Abandoned - You will not conclude this sale or business deal at this time, but you might return to it later on. Maybe this is your decision (i.e. customer is not the right fit until you launch a new initiative for such customers) or maybe this is the customer's decision (i.e. they don't have budget now but are hoping to get budget allocation to pursue your business next quarter). You can indicate what happened in the notes so it's easy to pick the opportunity back up at a later date. You can also set the close date to today, which helps keep your reporting accurate. To keep track of your abandoned opportunities, create a filtered list to come back to.

Before we define and create those business opportunity records, let’s set up your pipeline.

Define your pipeline stages

To determine the stages of your pipeline, start by writing down the steps in your sales cycle from start to finish.

Create your Pipeline

Sign into your Copper account and click the gear icon known as System Settings.

Under the Customize Copper section, choose Pipeline.

Click ‘Create New Pipeline.’ Here’s where it gets creative.

In the blank field next to ‘Stage Name,’ enter a stage in your sale cycle.

Below ‘Win Probability %,” you’ll enter the likelihood of winning this business deal or just getting from this stage to the final stage in your pipeline. An opportunity in the first stage of your pipeline will have a lower probability of winning when compared to an opportunity that you have moved through your pipeline to the final stages.

Click ‘Save’ when you’re finished.

Repeat this until you've created all of your stages.

Still have questions?

Still have questions? Ask in our Community, and get answers from our Customer Success Team as well as fellow users.